This is not an essay, by the by, more....a consideration of subject. Homebrew, weighted with one eye on the doors ahead, one I'm less concerned with the current functionality and more the way it fits in the public craw, if it jives with people who like it and incites curiosity in the skeptical. With that noted:
Anyone who has engaged with me for more than a minute knows that I stress the importance of understanding a Beast's Lair as a literal manifestation of their presence in the psycho-spiritual landscape of humanity*. If you've gotten me on things I'd like to see or gotten me into dealing with the consequences of esoterica, you've also undoubtedly heard me mention how one of the interesting things about Beasts is that while they maintain a form of individuality, the Horror-as-Goetia** means that a Beast is now an acting incarnation of a portion of humanity, that they represent a portion of people-a metaphysical quirk I always found really fascinating and always wanted to play more with-ways in which being the multitude in the gourd could mechanically come to bear as much as the Beast's ability to be the world inside the gourd is brought to bear through standing Lair mechanics. There's a lot of ways that could be played with, but I have a particular angle that itches my teeth.
In this 'frain, I found a comment from Yossarian stuck in my brain and wouldn't dislodge from itself-the notion that Beasts, at one point in development, were suggested in having something of a Disquiet-like effect on the people around them. It would be crass to do a direct one-to-one with that, but there's something in the living memetic that aims to propogate it's presence in the world having this notion where their presence fractals and spirals outward in mythic recursion. Stories gain power through their retelling, and we draw power from connecting to the archetypal forces of natural experience and humanistic interpretation-might a Beast, as they ride that circle upwards, find their narrative not merely become re-emergent, but empowered when it rises up by virtue of their presence? Such also has a certain jive with Mage's Nimbus, and Resonance in general as explored along the way***.
That started jiving a lot with some of the concepts I had, that seemed to be jiving with the community, in regards to Beast as a Scion Darkly, a game about Building Your Legend, wherein selfish Hunger conflicted with developing community and Kinship, in finding the line between one's one disciplined importance in the world and one's harmonized acceptance of their unimportance to a brutal and nurturing nature. It didn't help that I was also watching The Good Place while a lot of this has been stewing initially. I've often held that Beast is a game about Self-Transcendence (taking one's actualized self and connecting it to the world outside the self, functionally making one's self a world to sustain life in, or at least a conviction that empowers and nurtures others) over the other game's general first focus on Self-Actualization (find the balance of understanding between one's monstrosity and one's humanity), that building your brand is also building a world, so....why not take to a logical extreme and look at Beast as a game of the Categorical Imperatives. Beasts already have their ability to call in in their worlds within to resonant places without-why not allow their values to be an available mantle of power for those who are part of the portion that a Beast makes up? What if part of the horror of Beasts was that their maxims could be universal laws? Or very damning temptations, at the least?
It also became the beginning of something "tangible" for Heroes to twist and Insatiable to render meaningless.
This feels like something to play with.
So Here's the Idea
For our purposes, let's call this trait...Not Legend, that'd be confusing. *thesaurus's the shit out of this*Lore, it continues the L framing, is loosely associated with Legend, but not a perfect word. I don't need a perfect word, so Lore works.
So, each dot of Lair gets a Lore associated with it, which is derived from either a Beast's Legend or Life (Lair 1 is always the Beast's Legend)-as a Beast grows in Lair, they adopt a new Legend or Lair based on the Anchor they supported and developed the most in pursuing that Lair, and the old Anchor becomes the Lore for that layer of Lair.
For now, I'm not directly interested in what exactly Lore does, so much as it something that empowers people who take it up if they pursue acting in accordance to it, and that people can recognize that there's a reason to act in accordance to this role, this statement of power. So maybe it's just extra dice, maybe they can access a Beast's Birthright, or maybe the normal effects for some of their Atavisms and Nightmares-who knows. The Point is that a young man, thinking to seduce his boss in order to get a promotion, can feel the power of a Beast who grew from being Seductive as something that would support him in his hunger, or that a normally Cautious young woman finds her caution to yield more results in this city than anywhere else, thanks to the Beast who's Life empowers her own. The Legends and Lives of the Beast incentivize people to act in the ways and forms that they themselves chased and presented as powerful, as correct, as worth bearing on people's minds and souls
THe more Lair increases, the farther a-field this option goes-here you can make a direct comparison to Disquiet.
The Insatiable have a way of scrubbing this out of a reason-the more they increase Schism, the more Lores are just removed from a Beast's Lair-no meaning or power to draw from a beast's Lair onto a person's self, all things rendered hollow. Heroes, by contrast, have some way they can change those Lores around-by interacting with a Beast's victims, terrorizing their Kin, and of course inflicting Anathema on a Beast-to Lores they perceive defining the Beast (and maybe also can use to incite more social penalties against a Beast, more directly Disquiet-like, I 'unno), souring and salting a Beast's legacy made manifest.
So this is the idea. Obviously we're not aiming for mechanical perfection, I'm more interested in "Is this something on track, something that fits and benefits Beast, or is not fun or off track?"
TO me, it feels like it fits where a tooth might be missing, but I confess that might just because I've been it gargling and swishing it around in my mouth with all these other teeth for a while.
*For now we'll ignore the larger questions that emerge from Chamber creation that can emerge from anyone who's not a demon, werewolf, or Sin-Eater.
**Mother's Land Dreamborn that stewed in the primal heart of collective humanity's soul until it became this hybridized entity who is both the World and People, but for our interests here we're mostly just dealing with Horrors as Temenotic Goetia.
***Also to lesser extents it brings up Werewolf's Renown, Geist's Regalia, and Changeling's Entitlements.
Anyone who has engaged with me for more than a minute knows that I stress the importance of understanding a Beast's Lair as a literal manifestation of their presence in the psycho-spiritual landscape of humanity*. If you've gotten me on things I'd like to see or gotten me into dealing with the consequences of esoterica, you've also undoubtedly heard me mention how one of the interesting things about Beasts is that while they maintain a form of individuality, the Horror-as-Goetia** means that a Beast is now an acting incarnation of a portion of humanity, that they represent a portion of people-a metaphysical quirk I always found really fascinating and always wanted to play more with-ways in which being the multitude in the gourd could mechanically come to bear as much as the Beast's ability to be the world inside the gourd is brought to bear through standing Lair mechanics. There's a lot of ways that could be played with, but I have a particular angle that itches my teeth.
In this 'frain, I found a comment from Yossarian stuck in my brain and wouldn't dislodge from itself-the notion that Beasts, at one point in development, were suggested in having something of a Disquiet-like effect on the people around them. It would be crass to do a direct one-to-one with that, but there's something in the living memetic that aims to propogate it's presence in the world having this notion where their presence fractals and spirals outward in mythic recursion. Stories gain power through their retelling, and we draw power from connecting to the archetypal forces of natural experience and humanistic interpretation-might a Beast, as they ride that circle upwards, find their narrative not merely become re-emergent, but empowered when it rises up by virtue of their presence? Such also has a certain jive with Mage's Nimbus, and Resonance in general as explored along the way***.
That started jiving a lot with some of the concepts I had, that seemed to be jiving with the community, in regards to Beast as a Scion Darkly, a game about Building Your Legend, wherein selfish Hunger conflicted with developing community and Kinship, in finding the line between one's one disciplined importance in the world and one's harmonized acceptance of their unimportance to a brutal and nurturing nature. It didn't help that I was also watching The Good Place while a lot of this has been stewing initially. I've often held that Beast is a game about Self-Transcendence (taking one's actualized self and connecting it to the world outside the self, functionally making one's self a world to sustain life in, or at least a conviction that empowers and nurtures others) over the other game's general first focus on Self-Actualization (find the balance of understanding between one's monstrosity and one's humanity), that building your brand is also building a world, so....why not take to a logical extreme and look at Beast as a game of the Categorical Imperatives. Beasts already have their ability to call in in their worlds within to resonant places without-why not allow their values to be an available mantle of power for those who are part of the portion that a Beast makes up? What if part of the horror of Beasts was that their maxims could be universal laws? Or very damning temptations, at the least?
It also became the beginning of something "tangible" for Heroes to twist and Insatiable to render meaningless.
This feels like something to play with.
So Here's the Idea
For our purposes, let's call this trait...Not Legend, that'd be confusing. *thesaurus's the shit out of this*Lore, it continues the L framing, is loosely associated with Legend, but not a perfect word. I don't need a perfect word, so Lore works.
So, each dot of Lair gets a Lore associated with it, which is derived from either a Beast's Legend or Life (Lair 1 is always the Beast's Legend)-as a Beast grows in Lair, they adopt a new Legend or Lair based on the Anchor they supported and developed the most in pursuing that Lair, and the old Anchor becomes the Lore for that layer of Lair.
For now, I'm not directly interested in what exactly Lore does, so much as it something that empowers people who take it up if they pursue acting in accordance to it, and that people can recognize that there's a reason to act in accordance to this role, this statement of power. So maybe it's just extra dice, maybe they can access a Beast's Birthright, or maybe the normal effects for some of their Atavisms and Nightmares-who knows. The Point is that a young man, thinking to seduce his boss in order to get a promotion, can feel the power of a Beast who grew from being Seductive as something that would support him in his hunger, or that a normally Cautious young woman finds her caution to yield more results in this city than anywhere else, thanks to the Beast who's Life empowers her own. The Legends and Lives of the Beast incentivize people to act in the ways and forms that they themselves chased and presented as powerful, as correct, as worth bearing on people's minds and souls
THe more Lair increases, the farther a-field this option goes-here you can make a direct comparison to Disquiet.
The Insatiable have a way of scrubbing this out of a reason-the more they increase Schism, the more Lores are just removed from a Beast's Lair-no meaning or power to draw from a beast's Lair onto a person's self, all things rendered hollow. Heroes, by contrast, have some way they can change those Lores around-by interacting with a Beast's victims, terrorizing their Kin, and of course inflicting Anathema on a Beast-to Lores they perceive defining the Beast (and maybe also can use to incite more social penalties against a Beast, more directly Disquiet-like, I 'unno), souring and salting a Beast's legacy made manifest.
So this is the idea. Obviously we're not aiming for mechanical perfection, I'm more interested in "Is this something on track, something that fits and benefits Beast, or is not fun or off track?"
TO me, it feels like it fits where a tooth might be missing, but I confess that might just because I've been it gargling and swishing it around in my mouth with all these other teeth for a while.
*For now we'll ignore the larger questions that emerge from Chamber creation that can emerge from anyone who's not a demon, werewolf, or Sin-Eater.
**Mother's Land Dreamborn that stewed in the primal heart of collective humanity's soul until it became this hybridized entity who is both the World and People, but for our interests here we're mostly just dealing with Horrors as Temenotic Goetia.
***Also to lesser extents it brings up Werewolf's Renown, Geist's Regalia, and Changeling's Entitlements.
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